Last Chance To Halt Great Ape Extinction

by Maria A. Schulz

According to the United Nations, at least $25 million is urgently needed to save the planet's last few gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans from destruction.

"Twenty-five million dollars is the bare minimum we need, the equivalent of providing a dying man with bread and water," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP).

"The clock is standing at one minute to midnight for the great apes, animals that share more than 96 percent of their DNA with humans," Toepfer said. "If we lose any great ape species, we will be destroying a bridge to our own origins and, with it, part of our own humanity."

All great ape species risk extinction, either in the immediate future or within the next 50 years, because of deforestation, poaching, live animal trade and human encroachment on their habitats.

The urgency of their plight was underscored by the United Nations as its environmental and cultural agencies met to outline a global strategy to prevent poaching and illegal trade, while encouraging education and ecotourism.

The three-day talks, held in Paris, drew representatives from 18 countries for what organizers said was the most wide-ranging meeting ever held on endangered great apes. The agencies also said they may need much more money than originally expected.

"We may need a much larger sum [than $25 million], certainly in the hundreds of millions, if we're going to guarantee saving these animals," said Robert Hepworth of UNEP.

The creatures' worst enemies are human beings, who are encroaching on their environment and decimating animal populations by poaching, consuming bush meat, and engaging in the trade of live animals.

"Research indicates that the western chimpanzee has already disappeared from three countries-Benin, the Gambia and Togo," said UNESCO expert Samy Mankoto, a specialist on biosphere reserves in Africa.

In Ghana, there are only 300-500 western chimps left, and in Guinea Bissau, the population has shrunk to less than 200.

Only about 600 mountain gorillas are still alive, holed up in the remote highlands of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where desperate poverty makes the animals a target for poachers and the hungry.

The outlook for the orangutan, a native of Southeast Asia, is also grim. In 28 years' time, there will be almost no habitat left that can be deemed "relatively undisturbed" according to a UNEP study.

"The writing is very much on the wall: We have within the next 15 to 20 years to halt that decline," said Ian Redmond, head of the technical support team for the U.N.'s Great Apes Survival Project (GRASP), launched in May 2001.

At the meeting, UNEP and UNESCO put together a plan to help countries protect their apes.

The plan includes satellite mapping of the apes' dwindling habitat, and help for Great Ape states in boosting law enforcement and in easing poverty around nature reserves.

The agencies are also encouraging countries to think about ways in which the apes can be an asset.

Uganda and Rwanda have positioned apes at the center of their tourism industries. Travelers pay about $100 for a day-long guided walking tour to see chimps. $100 is the equivalent of a small fortune in an impoverished country.

"If we can't save these species which are so close to us, do we have very much hope with some of the other particularly threatened species and ecosystems?" UNEP's Robert Hepworth asked.

© 2003 Animal News Center, Inc.